Iran's Election Drama More Elaborate Than You Think

The world has been mesmerized by events in Iran over the
past several weeks. First, there was a fierce presidential
campaign that saw Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist
candidate, rise in the polls. Huge rallies were held around
Iran to support his candidacy. For the first time since the
1979 Revolution, Iranians at home and abroad seemed to be
united in their quest to oust President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

One hour after voting had ended on June 12, Iran's Interior
Ministry had called Mousavi's headquarters to inform him
that he was going to win, and that he should prepare his
victory statement without boasting too much, in order not to
upset Ahmadinejad's supporters. But suddenly everything
changed. Several commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRG)
showed up at Mousavi's headquarters and told him that his
campaign was tantamount to a "velvet revolution," which they
would not allow to succeed. Then the results of the rigged
election were announced, which started the protests that
continue today.

But who is the real power behind Iran's rigged
presidential election, which has been called an "election
coup" by a Mousavi spokesman? It is widely believed that, as
the commander in chief of Iran's armed forces, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the coup leader. But the
issue is more complex.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari

Ever since he was appointed as the IRG's top commander
three years ago, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari has been
talking about the "internal threat" to the Islamic
Revolution. He has even reorganized the Guards for them to
be better prepared for any uprising. Moreover, a few days
before the June 12 elections, the IRG's head of the
political directorate, Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani, accused
Mousavi and other reformists of trying to start a color
revolution (since Mousavi had used green as the symbol of
its campaign), and warned that the Guards "will suffocate it
before it is even born." So the coup leaders are, in fact,
the IRG's top commanders. They represent the right wing of
the second generation of Iranian revolutionaries.

The second-generation revolutionaries were in their
twenties at the time of the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979.
They joined the IRG almost immediately after the Revolution
and fought two fierce wars in the 1980s: against Saddam
Hussein's forces, which had invaded Iran in September 1980,
and against the forces of Mujahideen-e Khalq organization (MEK),
an armed Islamic leftist group that had opposed the shah.
After the MEK began assassinating Iran's leaders in June
1981, the young revolutionaries waged a bloody battle
against them, killing thousands, and forced the MEK into
exile in Iraq, where it collaborated with Saddam Hussein.
The MEK is now listed by the State Department as a terrorist
organization.

Using the war with Iraq as the excuse, the young Islamic
revolutionaries also helped their clerical leaders -
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (who
was elected Iran's president for two terms from 1989-1997
and is still a powerful politician), Ayatollah Khamenei (who
was Iran's president in the 1980s), and others - to impose
extreme political repression on Iran, one result of which
was the effective elimination of all secular political
groups from Iran's political scene, a terrible blow to
Iran's political development.

The war with Iraq ended in July 1988. Many of the young
Islamic revolutionaries either supported the execution of
thousands of political prisoners in July-September 1988 or
were silent and did not protest it. Then, Ayatollah Khomeini
passed away in June 1989. That split the young
revolutionaries into two camps.

In one camp were the Islamic leftists who believed that
Iran needed a political opening to end the extreme
repression of the 1980s. Many in this group were members of
the intelligence apparatus and, therefore, were fully aware
of what was going on in the society and sensed the danger of
a social explosion and counterrevolution. They are now the
leaders of the reform movement.

The young revolutionaries in the second camp were
conservative. Some stayed with the IRG after the war, people
like Gen. Jafari and Gen. Javani. Others, such as President
Ahmadinejad, Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli, and his main
deputy Kamran Daneshjou, who supervised the elections,
joined the bureaucracy.

Ayatollah Khomeini's death had another long-term
consequence whose effect is felt today. It made it possible
for a reactionary Islamic group to reemerge. The group,
called the Hojjatiyeh Society, was founded in the 1950s and
was fiercely opposed to the Bahai faith and the Sunni sect
of Islam, and it even worked with the shah's secret service
to stymie the spread of Communism in Iran. It also opposed
the 1979 Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of
Valaayat-e Faghih (governance of the Islamic jurist), the
foundation of Iran's constitution and political system.
Ayatollah Khomeini banned the Hojjatiyeh in 1983 and
famously said of them that "they cannot run even a bakery,
let alone a country."

After its reemergence in the early 1990, the name
Hojjatiyeh was never used. Its members began advocating an
Islamic government led by an unelected supreme leader,
rather than an Islamic Republic. Their present leader is
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a hard-liner and
reactionary cleric who has openly opposed any meaningful
elections and is Ahmadinejad's spiritual leader.

Ayatollah Mesbah, as he is called in Iran, once said, "It
does not matter what people think. They are ignorant sheep."
He believes that the supreme leader is selected by
God, and the task of the ayatollahs who are members of
Iran's Assembly of Experts (a constitutional body that
chooses the supreme leader) is to discover him.
Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has referred to
Ayatollah Mesbah's followers as the "shallow-thinking
traditionalists with Stone-Age backwardness."

Ayatollah Mesbah's disciples include Intelligence
Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei, Mojtaba Hashemi
Samareh (a senior aid to Ahmadinejad), and Ahmadinejad
himself. In fact, all of Iran's intelligence ministers since
the Revolution have been Ayatollah Mesbah's students in his
seminary, the Haghani School in Qom. Many of the top
commanders of the IRG are his followers. The Basij militia,
a paramilitary group controlled by the IRG, has also been
deeply penetrated by his disciples, as has the judiciary.
Ever since he was elected president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has
repeatedly used Ayatollah Mesbah's term "Islamic government
of Iran" rather than "Islamic Republic of Iran."

Thus, the men behind the election coup are the
second-generation revolutionaries whose spiritual leader is
Ayatollah Mesbah. Two weeks before the elections Mesbah
issued a secret fatwa - which was leaked by some in the
Interior Ministry - authorizing the use of any means to
reelect Ahmadinejad, hence giving the green light for
rigging the elections.

But what are the goals of the coup? There appear to be
three.

One is purging the old, first-generation revolutionary
leaders, including the most important of them, the former
president and powerful politician Rafsanjani. Ever since
Ahmadinejad defeated him in the disputed 2005 presidential
elections, he and his supporters have been bitter foes of
Rafsanjani and his supporters. Rafsanjani has let it be
known that he believes that Ahmadinejad is hurting Iran's
national interests with his foreign policy, rhetoric against
Israel, and inflammatory statements about the Holocaust.

But the antagonism toward Rafsanjani has an economic
dimension too. He and his family are fabulously rich and
favor a modern economy. And just as Ahmadinejad has
consolidated the IRG's hold on Iran by appointing cabinet
members, provincial governor-generals, and city mayors from
the ranks of the IRG, he also wants to consolidate the IRG's
hold on Iran's economy. Under him, the IRG has won more than
$10 billion in contracts over the past four years. The IRG
now wants to eliminate the competition from Rafsanjani and
his supporters.

In his "victory" speech on Sunday June 14, Ahmadinejad
never mentioned even once Ayatollah Khomeini or the Islamic
Republic. Thus, just as Deng Xiaoping and his successors
have kept Mao Zedong's pictures everywhere and Joseph Stalin
kept Lenin's pictures everywhere while acting against what
Mao and Lenin advocated, Iran's second-generation
revolutionaries will keep Ayatollah Khomeini's pictures
everywhere (as well as Khamenei's) while acting against his
teachings, including his most famous saying, "The scale [for
people's acceptance of a politician] is the people's vote."

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad (July 2008)

The second goal of the coup is moving the country toward
an Islamic government by making the elections a meaningless
process that can be easily rigged or manipulated, which will
destroy the republican aspect of Iran's political system
This is recognized by the reformists, and indeed the great
majority of the Iranian people, which is why they are
resisting the rigged elections. Their resistance is not what
the coup leaders expected.

The third goal is to start the preparation for the
eventual replacement of Ayatollah Khamenei, who is known to
be ill, by someone they trust. Rafsanjani chairs the
Assembly of Experts that selects the supreme leader. Given
his important role in the Revolution and his influence,
Rafsanjani will play a crucial role in the succession
process. Thus, if he can be eliminated, it will pave the way
for Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, or one of his disciples, to
become the supreme leader.

Thus, this is a pivotal moment in Iran's contemporary
history, and indeed the Middle East's. If the
second-generation revolutionaries succeed, Iran will enter a
period of extreme political repression, which will make it
easier for the War Party and the Israel lobby to try to
convince the public that Iran's nuclear program must be
handled through military attacks.

If, on the other hand, the protests succeed in turning
back the rigged elections, the reformists and democratic
groups will have a golden opportunity to move Iran much
faster toward a democratic political system, which will be
crucial to the stability of the Middle East.

About the author:

Muhammad Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering and materials science,
and the NIOC professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, has published extensively on Iran's political
developments and its nuclear program.